Australian TV Plays: The House of Mancello (18 April 1962)

The third in a series of six plays by Australian writers done by the ABC in 1962.

Premise

An Italian immigrant family, the Mancellos, have a dress manufacturing business which is in trouble. Mama Mancello has never considered herself an Australian. She has run the businsess since her husband died and takes it for granted her daughter will take over. Mama runs the business along old fashioned lines and refuses to update it. Lucia knows the business is going broke but can't tell Mama to truth.

They import Joe, a dress designer relative from Italy to make changes (to turn the place into a fashion shop) which impresses commercial traveller Thompson. Mamma Mancello resents him but goes along wiith it because he is family. However then Lucia's car salesman boyfriend Fred tries to persuade his girlfriend to sell the factory premises to his boss, using the possibility of partnership for himself and marriage to Lucia as bait. Mama turns to Joe in an attempt to disrupt the plain.

Cast

Moira Carleton as Mama Mancello
Elizabeth Goodman as Lucia Mancello
Mark Kelly as Joe
Campbell Copelin as Mr Thompson, the commercial traveller
Roly Barlee
Joan Harris
Diana Bell
Carol Potter
Margaret Browne
Brenda Beddison
Pat McLean

Production

Chris Gardner was a housewife who began writing ten years before this aired. Her play The Pub at Pelican Creek was performed in 1961. She wrote short stories, radio plays and the TV play Dark Under a Sun.

It was shot in Melbourne and directed by William Sterling, who had made Dark Under the Sun. Sterling said "Chris Gardner's strength as a playwright lies in her shrewd character observation. She likes to build her stories round.a small group of people and virtually isolate them from the rest of the world. This makes her plots particularly suitable for television."

The sets were designed by Gunar Jergens.

The play had a working title of Peep of heaven.

Other versions

The story was adapted for Australian radio in 1963, in 1964 and in 1966.

Reception

The Age called it "a potboiler which had too few moments" where the "broken English... became a little tiresome" and the "plot was so thin."

The Sydney Morning Herald said that the play "was yet another classic demonstration of the ruinous effects of poor television techniques on even the best of plays" in particular, maintaining "a camera angle of roughly 50 to 60 degrees for the duration of the 45-minute production, and for all shots including groups and close-ups, a fault most box camera enthusiasts would be ashamed of. And lighting, such an important factor, was equally rudimentary." The critic did think "to a really dedicated viewer the play itself revealed many timely, interesting aspects of a migrant family's assimilation problems in Australia. But the dialogue is not brilliant, and such climaxes as there are attain little real force."

The Australian Woman's Weekly said she "enjoyed thoroughly" the play.